As I said, I've posted this before and appreciate your indulgence in allowing me to post it again. When I first wrote it I called it:
Scared that He'll Be Caught
This is a tough week for anyone who's ever picked up, owned, or been named for anyone in, Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints. I say that because this week the main event, of course, was this past Sunday, Saint Patrick's Day.
I'm not sure every place on earth paints the median strips on main street green as part of the parade or adds food coloring to the beer but let's face it, Saint Patrick is the 800-pound gorilla in the room for the entire month of March.
This is too bad because today is the Feast of Saint Joseph, husband of Mary (Mother of God) and (to my mind) Jesus' step-dad. I sometimes fantasize about an at-the-dinner-table exchange between the Son of Man (as a child) and Joseph that has the latter suggesting "Then go right ahead and ask your 'real dad' for a new bike and let's see what happens." And then I wake up in Hell and have no reason to complain.
This is too bad because today is the Feast of Saint Joseph, husband of Mary (Mother of God) and (to my mind) Jesus' step-dad. I sometimes fantasize about an at-the-dinner-table exchange between the Son of Man (as a child) and Joseph that has the latter suggesting "Then go right ahead and ask your 'real dad' for a new bike and let's see what happens." And then I wake up in Hell and have no reason to complain.
Today, the Feast of Saint Joseph is when the swallows come back to Capistrano. I wonder if the village fathers paint the center stripe on their main street a shade of bird droppings white and grey or if they even have a parade (I think I'd steer clear of the beer, but that's just me).
As urbane and worldly-wise as I like to think of myself, I love the story as much now as I did hearing it as a child. I find it reassuring and, while my belief in a Divine Being fluctuates wildly (and how screwed am I if Her/His belief in me reflects that same fluctuation?), I hope (in a faint-hearted, wimpy sort of way) that Paley is right about the Great Watchmaker.
I borrow a sentiment from Jackson Browne, in claiming that 'I don't know what happens when people die.' And in keeping with that latter point, I have known two very dear people who shared the Feast of Saint Joseph as their birthday.
I borrow a sentiment from Jackson Browne, in claiming that 'I don't know what happens when people die.' And in keeping with that latter point, I have known two very dear people who shared the Feast of Saint Joseph as their birthday.
They are both from long ago, at the time when I knew everything (and everything better) while I worked for the American Forces (Europe) Network and Bob was my first (and very best) boss in Radio Command Information (together with Sara, Marge, and Brian) while Gisela was the record librarian of the most amazing (and amazingly organized) collection of vinyl in the world.
Bob was married to 'local color' as I was to be as well (GIs who married citizens from the country in which they were stationed; usually men who married women but NOT always). He and Erika had no children but loved as if she were one, a stray dog they took in and kept all its life, Sandy.
Bob might have reminded some of an absent-minded professor, as his desk was piled high with scraps and bits of every single project he ever worked on (I suspect) but he knew where every single item and element was in that office and when he was in mid-project he was a wonder to behold creating entire campaigns out of baling wire and chewing gum (metaphorically speaking).
Bob was married to 'local color' as I was to be as well (GIs who married citizens from the country in which they were stationed; usually men who married women but NOT always). He and Erika had no children but loved as if she were one, a stray dog they took in and kept all its life, Sandy.
Bob might have reminded some of an absent-minded professor, as his desk was piled high with scraps and bits of every single project he ever worked on (I suspect) but he knew where every single item and element was in that office and when he was in mid-project he was a wonder to behold creating entire campaigns out of baling wire and chewing gum (metaphorically speaking).
Erika and Sandy passed away pretty close to one another, leaving a hole in Bob's heart that never healed, filled with a pain of which he never spoke. Bob himself passed away many years ago but I see him at this very moment in my mind's eye as he was then, in a beaten beige long coat with a beret he wore in every kind of weather.
Gisela was my translator when the letter of permission from the Standesamt of Offenbach am Main (where Sigrid and I hoped to marry) arrived and I raced frantically from office to office trying to find someone to be my eyes (I was illiterate auf Deutsch and vowed to never be that guy again).
Gisela was my translator when the letter of permission from the Standesamt of Offenbach am Main (where Sigrid and I hoped to marry) arrived and I raced frantically from office to office trying to find someone to be my eyes (I was illiterate auf Deutsch and vowed to never be that guy again).
Gisela put her glasses on near the edge of her nose and would read a line and then look over the tops to give me the English translation. I still recall the shine in her eyes and her warm smile when she reached the paragraph granting us permission to marry and she clasped both of my shoulders and hugged me in congratulations.
I remember both of them today, maybe more so than Saint Joseph, perhaps because I don't know how many others remember them and I'm sad when I think about what happens to you when the last person on earth to know you has died.
I remember both of them today, maybe more so than Saint Joseph, perhaps because I don't know how many others remember them and I'm sad when I think about what happens to you when the last person on earth to know you has died.
So today I tell again a little of the story of their lives, as I knew them, to remind me to celebrate them and hope there comes a day when we can laugh together about all of that and so much more.
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